Technical Disclosure Commons
Defensive Publications Series
December 05, 2017 Navigation of blogs related by a tag Sergey Babkin
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Recommended Citation Babkin, Sergey, "Navigation of blogs related by a tag", Technical Disclosure Commons, (December 05, 2017) http://www.tdcommons.org/dpubs_series/867
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Technical Disclosure Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Defensive Publications Series by an authorized administrator of Technical Disclosure Commons. Babkin: Navigation of blogs related by a tag
Navigation of blogs related by a tag ABSTRACT
Techniques of this disclosure automatically add links to a blog post that enable
navigation within a collection of related posts, e.g., posts related by a tag. Blog readers can
navigate directly within the linked posts. In a static implementation, the links to posts are
automatically updated and stored in a database whenever any post changes. In dynamic
implementation, the links to other posts corresponding to a tag are generated when the post is
rendered as a web page or upon user selection of a particular tag.
KEYWORDS
● blog
● tag
● hashtag
● blog navigation
BACKGROUND
A blog (also called a weblog) website comprises entries, e.g., posts or articles, that are
often organized in reverse chronological order. Blogs usually include features such as comments
and include links to other blog posts. A blog author that writes multiple posts about a single topic
can tag such posts with specific keywords. On most blogs, each post has links to previous, next,
first, and last posts. Such links do not point to posts related by a tag. To view posts related to a
tag, a blog reader can perform a search using the tag. Navigating such search results is
inconvenient, e.g., since the posts are presented in a reverse chronological order, e.g., most
recent to oldest, whereas it is more natural for a reader to read the earlier posts first. Further,
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when there are many posts under a single tag, readers may not be able to complete reading the
posts in one sitting and may not remember where they left off in a previous reading session.
To organize related posts, blog authors often manually number such posts, and add links
to the previous and next posts for each post. To add a new post under a tag, the link in the
previous post is modified to point to the latest post, and a link to the previous post is added to the
latest post. While this makes it more convenient for readers to navigate the blog, this requires
effort by the blog author.
DESCRIPTION
Techniques of this disclosure automatically add links to tagged blog posts such that
readers of the blog can easily navigate through blog posts within that tag.
Fig. 1: Automatic generation of tag links
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Fig. 1 illustrates an example blog user interface that supports navigation through tagged
blog posts, per techniques of this disclosure. A blog (100) is shown with the blog author’s
domain name or specifically chosen name (102) displayed at the top of the page.
The blog illustrated in Fig. 1 includes a post titled “blog_e” (104), which is the fifth of
five consecutive blog posts, the first four named “blog_a,” “blog_b,” “blog_c,” and “blog_d,”
each having two tags (106), e.g., tag_5 and tag_14. These tags are keywords for the blog posts
and act as an index for the blog. When a reader searches for posts, e.g., using the tag, a web
server retrieves and displays the tagged posts. A reader can also click on “Newer Post” (108) and
“Older Post” (110) links to navigate to these posts, which may not be associated with the same
tag.
“Tag_5 (5)” (114) of blog_e also appears in the list of all tags (112) for the blog. The
number 5 next to tag_5 indicates that tag_5 is matched to five posts, blog_a through blog_e. The
blog archive (116) lists posts in reverse chronological order. In this example, the posts are
categorized by year and subcategorized by months. For example, post blog_e is dated in the
month of September (118).
Per techniques of this disclosure, tag links (120) to older and newer posts associated with
a particular tag are automatically added to a blog post. For example, if a reader selects the option
“Older Post” for tag_5, the post blog_d is loaded. Similarly, if the reader selects the option
“Oldest Post” for tag_5, the post blog_a is loaded.
Thus, techniques of this disclosure provide tag-specific links to navigate to other posts
associated with the tag, in addition to chronologically newer and older posts that may be
associated with other tags. Such navigation-by-tag can be added for a subset of tags or for all the
tags.
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Automatic linking of tagged blogs can be done in different ways. For example, when a
post is created or edited, the blog hosting software can statically create tag links and save the
links within the post or within a database. In another example, the links to tagged posts can be
dynamically created when a post is rendered as a web page.
Fig. 2: Static creation of tag links
Fig. 2 illustrates static generation of tag links. When a blog post is created or updated,
server (208) saves it in, e.g., in a database, in posts (202), and saves tags in tags (204). It also
computes and updates information of linked posts in tag links (206). Tag links include, for
example, the first post and last post associated with a tag, the previous post and next post
associated with a tag, etc.
When a reader of the blog requests to view the post in a web browser (210), the server
retrieves the text (212) of the post and static tag links (214) and renders the blog page.
Dynamic creation of tag links can be done in different ways. For example, in one
implementation, URLs of the blog posts, e.g., blog_d.html, blog_c.html, etc. are generated and
included when displaying the blog page. In a second dynamic implementation, the web server
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uses dynamic requests for tag links at the time of display of the page. When a link is clicked, the
server resolves and redirects the blog reader to the corresponding page. For example, a dynamic
request for a link can be of the form “blog_e.html?navigate-by-tag=tag_5&direction=newer.” In
the example of Fig. 1, when a reader currently on blog_e, clicks on Older Post’, the server
resolves the dynamic request and load the post blog_d.
Fig. 3: Dynamic generation of tag links in blog page
Fig. 3 illustrates dynamic generation of links as described in the first implementation,
where actual URLs are inserted at the time of display of the blog page. When a reader requests a
blog post in a browser (310), server (308) retrieves the corresponding text (312) from posts (302)
and one or more tags (304). Tag links (306) are determined as actual URLs and displayed in the
blog page (314). The links correspond to, e.g., previous, next, most recent, and oldest posts
associated with a tag.
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Fig. 4: Dynamic generation of links upon selection
Fig. 4 illustrates dynamic generation of tag links by a second implementation, e.g., tag
links that are generated upon a reader selecting a displayed dynamic tag. Upon a user request for
a tag link (414), a dynamic request (416) is sent to the server. The server resolves the dynamic
request and redirects the browser to the requested blog post.
CONCLUSION
Techniques of this disclosure enable automatic generation of navigation links to tagged
posts within a blog. The techniques enable blog authors to publish blogs with automatically
inserted intuitive navigation links to related posts. A blog reader benefits by being able to
navigate quickly through blog topics of interest.
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